Maureen Gitau: Caretaker accused of murder 'put body in bin'

A caretaker has appeared in court accused of murdering a woman and putting her body in a bin before the contents were incinerated.

Maureen Gitau, 24, was last seen by her family as she left her aunt's birthday party in Deptford, south-east London, on 5 December last year.

It is claimed she went to meet Mark Moodie, 55, who is accused of her murder.

Woolwich Crown Court heard he took her to some flats where he worked.

When she left the party, she was described as being "in a good mood", jurors were told.

Prosecutor Jocelyn Ledward said Mr Moodie was seen moving a large communal waste bin around the basement of Richmond House in Deptford. It was later seen outside the cleaners' room by some of the block's residents.

He later allegedly placed it back in the bin store and covered her body up with rubbish, the court heard.

"The rubbish was collected a few days later, and taken to a processing plant, where it seems inevitable that Maureen Gitau's body was incinerated very quickly, possibly even before she was ever reported missing," she said.

"Certainly, her body has not been recovered despite an extensive search."

The court heard the pair had both worked as cleaners at the Oval cricket ground in the summer of 2022, where they were said to have been "more than just work colleagues".

They were in phone contact almost every day between July and September that year but kept in touch far less frequently until the night of the alleged murder, the prosecution said.

When interviewed by police in December 2022, the defendant claimed she had phoned him to ask if they could meet after work on the night she was last seen.

He said his phone showed he called her around an hour after he agreed to meet her after work and that he travelled by bus to meet her in Deptford Bridge.

He claimed he found her at a bus stop there, gave her £10 and a cigarette and spoke to her for about five minutes before returning home, the court heard.

Ms Ledward said "many aspects" of his statements to officers were "entirely untrue, as the police investigation would later reveal based on a combination of Oyster card data, CCTV and telephone evidence".

He instead contacted her just before 18:30 but had deleted evidence of those and other conversations from his phone, the court heard.

The defendant, from Woolwich in south-east London, denies murder and two counts of perverting the course of justice.

The trial continues.

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